Simple Praise
by palomino333
Summary: Set during Portal 2. After Wheatley's betrayal, Chell receives a small recognition for her troubles. One-shot.


I'll admit it, I fell in love with the Portal series. My personal favorite character is Chell for the simple fact that she is just so defiant, and willful to survive. I haven't done an introspective one-shot with female character that doesn't involve romance, and Chell is the ideal candidate.

A friend of mine on deviantart pointed out a few flaws in this story, and I've since edited them to the best of my ability. The location where Chell is in now is where she hears Cave's pre-recorded voice give the "I like your style" shpiel.

I don't own Portal.

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"A bitter, unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. Shall not be mourned."

Chell winced at the memory of GLaDOS' cold words. Even considering the source, which was now a miniscule potato battery, the words still packed a heavy punch.

Lost in the bowels of what had once been a thriving company, she knew that no one would come for her, should she perish.

Chell craned her neck to better have a look at the platform high above her. It was one of a few metal pillars in this desolate area, its catwalk broken off. She would need to find another way up.

Easily accepting the challenge, she aimed her portal gun up, and fired at the wall above the ledge. A bright orange, closed portal materialized within moments.

Turning on her heel, she spun the gun to face the wall of an opposite pillar beside her, and fired again. The blue ring opened before her to reveal the catwalk itself, which shone a dreary silver in the low service lighting.

Stepping through it, Chell fell the short distance onto the concrete platform adjoining the catwalk.

Resting her back against the wall behind her, she stared out at the other broken and abandoned catwalks, their vaulted paths effectively leading to nowhere.

What she wouldn't give for some company right now…

Wheatley had appeared as that source of companionship at first, but it hadn't ended well. It had been wise of her to refuse to speak to him, as she had refused GLaDOS. She never had much luck with artificial intelligences.

Chell closed her eyes, and covered them with her hand. How proud her father had been of her potato's growth. The soft patting of his hand on her shoulder remained so clear to her, even now. "That's my little girl."

She let go of her face to in turn rest her hand on that very shoulder.

Chell, for as much as she wished to cry over the matter, felt no tears forming in her eyes. Too much time had passed, and she had steeled herself against too much, to squander her newfound strength with childhood memories.

Every test she had completed under the close watch of GLaDOS before first defeating her had led to no reward, save another test. The tests after the rebirth of the artificial intelligence had held nothing but personal attacks.

Her hand slipped off. For as glad as she had been to dethrone GLaDOS from her seat of power, it had come to nothing. Wheatley, at first seeming the knight in shining armor, had trapped her down there with her.

With a scowl, she corrected herself. Knight in shining armor, how foolish. She was far past the point of believing a hero would save her. But she had come so close, oh so close…The warm light of the Sun had just eluded her grasp, the deer of which GLaDOS had spoken running just out of sight, its white tail disappearing into the green leaves.

"I! AM NOT! A MORON!"

Chell remembered how she had pressed herself tightly against the safety bar behind her as Wheatley had struck the lift, the glass effectively shattering, and breaking to lay at her feet. Despite such a hope quite effectively being destroyed before her very eyes, she still gripped her portal gun, not caring for its relative uselessness at that point. The strands of her black hair, moist with sweat, had hung over her narrowed eyes. Her teeth were gritted. If he cared not for their previous alliance, neither did she. He wasn't taking her down without a fight.

Her hand clenched into a fist at her side. Despite what he had become, Wheatley had still been the closest thing to a friend since that fateful day of the science fair.

"We are escaping! That's what's happening now: we're escaping." His blue optic had shone down the catwalk for her, giving her a definitive path to follow when she had fled GLaDOS' wrath.

Now, there was no guidance. She had only herself to rely upon.

Chell's grip slackened, and her hand fell flat against her side as she turned her head.

As for the current task at hand, the answer was simple. A box-like structure was suspended before her, its lights brightly displaying its lower inner walls and floor covered with a pure white portable surface. Thankfully, no exterior glass was there to hinder her.

A new blue portal splashed onto the floor within, creating her next destination.

Crouching down, Chell leapt back into the orange portal, and as a result, was catapulted slightly upwards into this new room. Her boots clomped against the floor as she landed.

"Ha! I like your style. You make up your own rules, just like me."

Chell raised her head with a soft release of breath at the upbeat, charismatic male voice. He began to rant about a policy concerning disabled workers as she mused. What was his name again? Ah, right, Cave Johnson.

A slight chill ran down her spine, causing her to wrap an arm around herself. Odd, it wasn't that cold, otherwise she would have covered her upper body with her jumpsuit top again. This was quite a stir.

Before she could think further on it, the warmth returned to her body.

Cave's voice was gone, and this time, rather than feeling a sense of confusion as she had before, Chell actually felt a sense of longing.

She drew away from herself, and stood a little taller than before.

"I get it now," Chell murmured to the silence.

The backup testing system had told her that all compliments were quite basically meaningless, as they had been pre-recorded, and that still applied here, but only to a certain extent. Cave was an ambiguous man to her, albeit pushy and rather loose on morals, but the words had said more than enough. Recorded or not, the words had (at the time of recording) been organic. Chell had found proof in the tumble-down original Aperture lobby that a human had once verbally dictated these words. Cave's face had been shown to her in the form of a framed photograph. He had seen his subject's strengths, and wanted to view more.

Granted, it was the same reaction as GLaDOS had given her, but in a somewhat less cold way, given his tone. Chell cynically acknowledged it was her lack of human interaction that was responsible for her newfound sense of pride in herself. Cave, considering he had made the previous male subjects interact with dangerous chemicals, had probably just wanted to press the limits of his high-caliber specimens with no regards to their safety.

But his voice, oh his voice...He was a different man from her father, but he had still existed. Cave had begun his life before the machines that tormented her now.

Chell lowered her head, and hugged her portal gun to her like a beloved child's toy. When she smiled, it was of sadness. Her father was long gone, and she was scrabbling at recordings in order to find another human being in this alien environment.

Maybe it wasn't so hard to think of those great men of yesteryear that had been run through these tests. She was walking in their footsteps.

Perhaps if she looked hard enough, she could see a friendly face, and an inviting wave.

Chell stepped toward the red button nestled in a white column before her, although not without looking over her shoulder once.

Words were simply words. They held no comparison to true flesh and warmth. What she wouldn't give to feel the touch of another human being…

She turned decidedly back around, and contemplated her sanity for a moment. Those men were either dead, or they had left long ago. She intended to join the latter category. One day, Chell knew, one day she would chase ghosts no longer. Before her pitiful life span would run out, she would locate that deer, she simply would.


End file.
